In the period preceding the Civil War mechanical inventions of merit by colored persons were not numerous, so far as the investigation has shown, but this was also true of all classes of inventors of that time. With the great majority of slaves the question uppermost among them was how to effect their freedom, and those who were fortunately gifted with an active intelligence and some vision were, for the most part, using their mental faculties to devise some plan to interest others in their efforts for emancipation. This situation would obviously lend itself more readily to developing literary talent and oratorical ability than to producing machinists, engineers or inventors. Hence the preachers and teachers and orators of the colored race that here and there rose above the masses greatly outnumbered the inventors. But it should be remembered also in this connection that in the period just mentioned the mechanical industries of the South were carried on mostly by slaves, and that bits of history gathered here and there show that many of the simple mechanical contrivances of the day were devised by the Negro in his effort to minimize the exactions of his daily toil. None of these inventions were patented by the United States as being the inventions of slaves; and it is quite conceivable that some inventions of value perfected by this class will be forever lost sight of through the attitude at that time of the Federal Government on that subject. In 1858 Jeremiah S. Black, Attorney-General of the United States, confirmed a decision of the Secretary of the Interior, on appeal from the Commissioner of Patents, refusing to grant a patent on an invention by a slave, either to the slave as the inventor, or to the master of the latter, on the ground that, not being a citizen, the slave could neither contract with the government nor assign his invention to his master.[16] Another instance of this sort was an invention on the plantation owned by Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, President of the late Confederate States. The Montgomerys, father and sons, were attached to this family, and some of them made mechanical appliances which were adopted for use on the estate. One of them in particular, Benjamin T. Montgomery, father of Isaiah T. Montgomery, founder of the prosperous Negro Colony of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, invented a boat propeller. It attracted the favorable attention of Jefferson Davis himself, who unsuccessfully tried to have it patented. The writer is informed by a recent letter from Isaiah T. Montgomery that it was Jefferson Davis's failure in this matter that led him to recommend to the Confederate Congress the law passed by that body favorable to the grant of patents for the inventions of slaves. The law was: